UC Davis has introduced a new Coffee Center to its Foods for Health Institute. The coffee-focused program joins other food and beverage programs at UC Davis, which has made valuable contributions to the food and wine industries and  is home to the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.

The UC Davis Coffee Center is currently being run on an ad hoc basis, funded by the Foods for Health Institute but without a permanent home. Once partnerships with the coffee industry firm up funding models, the university may introduce a coffee sciences major.

Research at the coffee center will examine every stage of production in the ever-growing coffee industry. Coffee producers that have partnered with Davis to foster the new coffee program cite the changing market and the need to better understand coffee crops as part of what inspired the Coffee Center.  

How could research in coffee science change the industry? Can UC Davis do for coffee what it did for wine?

Guest:

J. Bruce German, director of the Foods for Health Institute at UC Davis